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What can be called a historic decision, the highest court of India has upheld the constitution validity of the RTE, (Right to Education Act, 2009). Enforcement of the law would essentially mean that owners of educational institutes will have to provide free education to children coming from poor families. The observation is definitely appears to be a boon and a blessing as the old Hindu year departs for underprivileged and/or not so rich and likely to weave new dreams.

I personally feel that the judgement is likely to raise questions more than controversy. The landmark decision was pronounced by a three judge bench comprising of Chief Justice SH Kapadia and justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar yesterday.

Indian School Children

Many children and parents alike supported SC’s decision, Aryan (13) of DAV Public School near Anand Vihar, New Delhi raised his concerns of an immediate fee hike. He said, “If the poor starts studying with us free, the principal will definitely increase our fees.” On the other hand, The RTE act mandates that 25 percent seats should be offered to government and private unaided schools, across the country. The apex court clarified that its judgement will come into force from April 12 but will only have a prospective affect and not retrospective affect. The bench reiterated that the act will apply uniformly to government and unaided private schools except unaided private minority schools.

Don’t even think about it or initiate a water cooler discussion. A B’Tech Grad from Madras was just signed at Rs. 65 Lakh p.a by Microsoft. Srinivas Balasubramanian is the guy, and he is from the National Institute of Technology – Karnataka (NIT-K) confirmed, really? The geek is yet to complete his grads (concludes in the summer of 2012) and by July same year. He will be bossing around at Redmond by September 27, 2012. He should be pockeying around the MS dev center, Redmond and work on Bing.

Bing, bing, binga

Srinivas, in-case you stumble around this blog anytime, do respond and congrats for the MS stint.

I stand in front of 1, Manak Vihar, ND-92 crossroad and smell the CWG flavour of the day, spruced up roads, pavements and the yellow halogen lights kiss the black bitumen. The recent rains have provided the needed moisture, the greens, on the either sides of the roads wanting for. As the nicotine goes up in the air, I just realized that it’s been 4 years.

“mujhe aaj hi shift karne ka hai,” that was said 4 years ago to him. How many of you want to share the first day @Veda excitement with me? My first full time job at the Manak Vihar basement came as a relief in multiple shots. Much has changed since then? The apartment B-131, 2nd floor was the best place on earth, at least to me. I had the best paranthas, freshly prepared dal, some rice and chappatis carefully wrapped around a thin muslin cloth inside the hot-case three times a day, mind it.

One independent room of freedom and some crazy room mates, definitely. Love, Rajan, Pawan and Vikram are great guys to know.

Before I tried to educate myself, as to how to draw the line between office colleagues and room mates, I found myself among them. B-131, had a party every day read nights of fun, debauchery and frolic complete with the sweet smelling liquid whereas the air turned pungent sometimes. How many of you remember Khach, khach?

So many pals from Tech, Apna– Ashok, Partha, Sriram and Priyanku in particular. Priyanku, do you remember the Anand Vihar railway station trip?

Highlights of B-131

One night we caught 25 rats

In one single day over 8 bottles went down the drains

3 bachelors tied knots

All the original members are still in touch and staying close by

Traces of spirits felt

Dai made his maiden flight trip from this place and important projects of course.

And lot more….I’ll remember Pawan for his pucca Punjabiness and opening ‘dukans’, Love’s louve for people, Rajan’s ‘khana’ and Vikram’s ‘dai-giri’. They are, and will be wonderfully successful people, I pray.

B-131 still stands strong somehow, minus the roomies. B-131 will miss us and so will we. It’s time to shift and move ahead.

I see a man quietly, crossing the road and eyeing one of the hundred flower pots meant for beautification purposes (hastily done by the Sheila Dixit government). Aghast, I see him actually picking up one of the earthen pots and without any fear (not even the cops sitting just next to his LML Vespa) place the pot infront of him.

I am still looking at him with utter disbelief, on the other side of the illuminated road. The scooter grumbled, and so did the inner me. I crossed the road and challenged him. He stared back, I was no less. The middle aged, slightly bald man questions back, “tujhe kya problem hai.” I retort, “yeh public property hai, aap nahi le jaa sakte.” He abused me. I didn’t care. This man, wearing a white shirt, pulled the gear of his scooter. In a fraction, I decided not to let him go. The only worry was the 2 Smirnoff Vodka bottles, in one hand and helmet on the other. I chased him and pulled back the scooter. I tried hard, but my will to stop him was much more than the machine. I didn’t let him go.

This time I looked directly, in his eye, I barked, “apne baccho ko kya sikhayenge?” A young man, came from the sideways took away the flower pot from the scooter and placed that back it deserved. The cops continued to watch but refused to intervene (their vanilla ice-cream 🙂 was melting btw).

The stare, the middle aged man gave, had a lot of questions.

Could be

1. who the hell is he?

2. What’s his problem in life

3. He should just get lost

4. I quick pick, just went off hand (because of this bugger)

People like him are there everywhere, “if only’ all of us become a little more aware and identify, what’s acceptable and what’s NOT. By the way, that man, looked, decent and fairly educated. Why did he steal something which belongs to the public?

Wow, since morning I have not received any TD or BM messages, I am sure you are experiencing the zen effect too. Thanks to the government which has banned bulk sms and mms across India, for 72 hours in the wake of the Ayodhya verdict.

I received any compelling SMS that demands me to buy a slim and sauna bet (really), a fat reducing tablet (Cant believe), the magic pill (hmm), an escort massage service (dreamy), the newly constructed apartment (Don’t I dare think of) or a phone a friend service (Do I need?).

Every week I allocate, 30 minutes only to delete these unwanted spam sms’s. More than informative, I have started finding them irritating. I am trying to concentrate, suddenly the vibration near my desk indicates an important information coming, no, they are selling Insurance.

How the heck they know I have so much money to invest in?? Is a question, I and many like me ask.

The 57th National Film awards were announced last night and Bollywood’s got reasons to cheer about. Amitabh Bacchan’s stands tall & surpassed his fellow mates by winning his third national award on his stupendous performance on Ad film maker R Balki’s ‘Paa”.

In this National award, Big pictures backed projects have received 14 trophies. The clear winner appeared to be Malayalam film “Kutty Srank: The Sailor of Hearts”- a story of a lonely and short tempered, boatman from Kochi – won five awards including best screenplay (original) and cinematography for P.F. Mathews-Harikrishna and Anjuli Shukla respectively.

Learn’t from the papers that the North Korea or as they would like to call themselves the DPRK threatened to wage a “sacred war” against the imperialist US and its so called the “puppet force” and a distant cousin. Saw a great AFP photo where a North Korean soldier peeps through the window trying to make out what Hillary Clinton might be saying at the demilitarised zone (DMZ) or what her husband and former US president Bill Clinton called “the world’s most scariest place.” Tipped as the world’s most secretive diplomatic zone where every action is watched and every “comment” analysed.

I wonder how will one of the and off course world’s very few centrally planned economy and it’s people will be able to achieve amid of sanctions (past and upcoming). It is despite the fact that the North Korean economy did well in comparison to its capitalist neighbor South Korea. As the Chinese manufacturing companies spread deep inside the Western world, the government’s open support to the North Korean regime is no secret at all. The Chinese finds a strong ally in it’s North-East region. Now how much is the Chinese economic and military support to the Dictator regime will only be clear in the next 2 weeks or months. In wake of the US-S.Korea joint naval exercise on the Sea of Japan, this time it could be worser than the 1950-53 Korean war. A slight mis-judgement can risk lives of 10’s of million people in Seoul and Kim Jong-2’s comrades do have the muscle indeed.

In the past six months there have been cautious exchanges of peace process from both the ends, sans the North Korea alter their nuclear programme. Lifting UN sanctions against North Korea should be talked as the world should be a freer and a better place. While there should be no harm in the naval exercise which the US and South Korea are starting today i:e 25th July, the six-party talks (which hasn’t happened since Dec – 2008) should resume with constructive agendas in mind.

As the economy sighs a better breath worldwide, it’s no time for animosity instead bringing back meaningful diplomacy right back in place and if it wasn’t then reinstate .

Hurting religious sentiments is certainly is an unpardonable act especially when it comes to poisoning young children’s minds. So, here is that all started. After airing the 200th episode of Comedy central’s South Park, a warning was posted on an Islamic website telling Tery Parker and Matt Stone(Show Creators) to stop their portrayals of the Prophet Mohammad (where Mohammed appeared in a bear guise) or they would face some serious consequences down the line.

Therefore in 201st episode ,there were useless beeps throughout the episode. Whenever a character referred to Muhammad he got bleeped out. It is believed that it was Comedy Central’s way of showing how ridiculous this whole thing is.

It is believed that “EVERYBODY DRAW MOHAMMAD DAY” is the public reaction against radical Islamists who warned the show creators of death consequences.

A drawing from FB event page

The Muslims around the world got outraged by the move and therefore demanded a ban on the event fueled by the popular networking site facebook. It is alleged by the by and large Muslims populace that FB had reservations against the minority. They have reasons for it, the anti-holocaust page was removed within 20 minutes of reporting whereas the anti-Muhammad event page still persisted and moreover garnered popularity by leaps and bounds. Not to forget that the David Headley is an accomplice, who had rock solid plans to eliminate the Danish cartoonist.

These chain of events have eventually led to banning/restricting modes of communication which in Pakistan is anyway limited. The world’s most popular sites i.e Twitter, FB and YouTube all are now under Pakistani government’s scanner.

We all know position ,the Prophet Mohammad acquires in Islam . Sketches, paintings or any other visual of Prophet Mohammad are considered to be act of blasphemy by Muslims. First, someone makes an offensive program and when the Muslims around the world protest against it then such kind of “event” is promoted on FB to take revenge. What if the same thing would have happened to your religion? There were had PILs filed , when Cricketer harbhajan singh and actress mona singh danced in a reality show by playing the character of Ravan & Sita respectively. Many Hindu groups protested against M.F Husain over nude paintings of Hindu Deities and mother India. No one has got the right to hurt any religious sentiments under the “Right of speech & Expression”.

Ayush is a student of Amity and pursuing his summer internship with Veda Informatics

Just few days back I came across this wonderful story from Mahabharata; this story was told by Bhishma to Yudhishtira. This story is an example of amazing loyalty and compassion which we find missing in today’s world. I was not able to find anything to write for blogging contest this time but when I read this story I thought of sharing this with everyone in Veda Family. Here the story goes….

Long time ago in a forest near Kasi (known as Varanasi now) lived a giant tree. Its branches were spread for miles around. This gaint tree gave shelter to many birds and animals like monkeys, squirrels etc. All types of birds had nests on this tree. Even snakes and lizards crawled beneath the tree seeking shade in hot days. All these living creatures were secure and happy under this tree. One day a hunter launched a poisoned arrow into trunk of tree while chasing its prey. Due to the harmful effects of the poison the leaves started falling from the tree and the branches started to tremor. All the inhabitants of the tree started running away from tree after they recognized the trouble. There was just one parrot who refused to leave the tree- its shelter in such condition. Everyone tried to persuade him to leave for his well being but he was just not ready to leave his home.

God was amazed by such conduct; he was surprised that how such a small creature can have such traits when humans don’t have it. He appeared in front of bird in guise of a priest and advised it to leave the tree. He asked the bird that there are many other trees in the forest that are laden with green leaves and fruits then why you don’t want to leave this tree and go to one of them. The bird replied: This is the place where I was born, here in this tree I gained all the good traits of my character and here I took shelter from all my enemies and natural hazards. Should I now abandon the one who has always been my support? The Vedas themselves teach –Matr Devo Bhav, Pitr Devo Bhav, guru devo bhav (means honor your mother, father and guru like God). This tree has been all to me. Should I abandon it now? Pleased by the bird’s conduct God revealed his identity and offered the parrot a wish. The parrot pleaded the God to save the tree; God saved the tree by showering nectar on it. The tree was saved just because of a small bird because that bird had sense of gratitude towards its benefactor.

This story teaches us to always be loyal to those who have offered shelter to us and who has been our support in bad times. We should never forget the people who have been compassionate towards us. If we are unable to see God in one who has been our help then we can-not see God anywhere. Whatever virtues, qualities we may have but without loyalty and compassion they are worthless. Being ungrateful is the worst thing that one can ever do.

The prime cause behind sharing this story with all of you is Veda. Through this story I wanted to give a message that I would have not been able to give otherwise. By the God’s grace Veda is in no such state, instead we have started our journey towards a bigger goal and we all know that the path to that goal is not going to be a piece of cake. There will be ups and downs for sure. What I expect from all of us to have loyalty and compassion that a little bird had shown towards the tree. Veda has always been shelter to fresh talent and welcomed it with open arms. Most of the people who are currently part of Veda family; had joined here as a fresher. When the world was not ready to accept us and give a chance to our talent, Veda did. We have gained all our knowledge and experience from this place and now is the time to hold our hands together and support our own nest. Whatever we are today worth of that’s all because of this wonderful company and now it’s our chance to give something back to it by supporting it up with our knowledge, experience and hard work. I believe that all of us feel the same but still I wanted to say this to everyone at Veda. I have full faith that we will fare through this very well and will become a much more successful company tomorrow. Today we are proud of this company which is an integral part of our lives and tomorrow also when we will look back I am sure we will be prouder.

“The greater the loyalty of a group towards the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.”